Working on the space station: York's Steve MacLean

Canadian Universities Forum (discussion group)

Subject: Working on the space station: York's Steve MacLean

Working on the space station: York´s Steve MacLean
TORONTO, Sept. 14, 2006 -- York alumnus Steve MacLean completed a successful spacewalk on Wednesday, along with fellow mission specialist Dan Burbank, and the International Space Station´s new set of solar arrays have been fully deployed.

It was the second spacewalk performed by the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which lifted off for the space station on Saturday, and a third spacewalk will take place on Friday. The new solar arrays will double the station´s ability to generate power from sunlight.

Full details and updates on the mission and its schedule, as well as NASA TV Webcasts, can be seen at NASA´s main shuttle page.

A direct feed from NASA is being shown in the lobby of the Computer Science & Engineering Building daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the duration of the shuttle mission.

MacLean, a member of the York University Alumni Association board, sent an e-mail to York President & Vice-Chancellor Lorna R. Marsden early in his mission to describe the view from space (see the Sept. 12 issue of YFile). He documented his pre-launch preparations in a diary published in the Aug. 10 and Aug. 16 issues of YFile. This is 51-year-old MacLean?s second flight into space ? his first was in 1992 ? and the first space walk for the physicist, who earned a BSc and PhD in physics at York as well as an honorary degree.